Demonstrations in support of the Kosovar population have taken place in most Albanian cities. They are always organised by local authorities (chief of a district or municipality) or political parties. The right-wing parties (Democratic Party, Republican Party, Balli Kombëtar, etc.) are more active than the left-wing ones in organising such demonstrations, which take the form of a series of official declarations before the population gathered in the town square. Generally speaking, only one such demonstration was organised in each town in the first week of March; but they have not been repeated or, at any rate, have not taken the form of daily protests, as has been the case in Kosovo. At the same time, the question of the reimbursement of the money lost last year in the pyramid schemes causes more than a hundred people to assemble every day in front of the headquarters of the Vefa company, where some creditors have gone on a hunger strike. In this case, the protests are not organised by the authorities or political parties but by the people themselves, gathered in association. Thus, in a somewhat caricatured way, the Albanians appear to be more willing to fight for their money than for their "Kosovar brothers".

It is hard to say just how many people participate in the demonstrations in support of Kosovo, since the press tends to overstate the number of participants. The most important demonstration was organised in Tirana, on Friday, 6 March, following the return of the deputies of the Democratic Party to parliament, and on their request. Despite the presence of President Rexhep Mejdani and the speaker of parliament Skënder Gjinushi, the figure dominating the demonstration was the head of the opposition Sali Berisha, who was the most applauded. All declarations clearly asserted the unity of the Albanian nation in the face of the Serb aggressor. There, Albania was defined as the reunification of Kosovo, Gegëri, Toskëri and Tchamerie, like "a trunk and its branches: If a branch is touched, the whole trunk is attacked, and the latter responds". Kosovo is "our lands, our houses." In the name of the government coalition, Pandeli Majko (PS) stated: "We have to unite, come together: the time has come. We must defend the nation against Belgrade’s chauvinistic aggression."

There was a stark contrast between the vindictive tone of the declarations (in which Milosevic was directly accused and threatened, defined as a "barbarian", and "the butcher of the Balkans") and the feeble participation of the population. The several thousand people present had come driven more by curiosity than by a determination to fight. The appeal for national solidarity is not sufficient to make them forget their mistrust towards the political class.

Nonetheless, the following day the press, of both the right and the left, described the demonstration as a historical event ("Seldom has Tirana’s central square held so many people"⁴) and spoke of huge crowds, which was absolutely not the case (50,000 participants according to Gazeta Shqiptare, hundreds of thousands, according to Republika). Actually, the demonstration was nowhere nearly as important as the last electoral meeting of Sali Berisha, at the time of the June 1996 parliamentary elections. The papers also featured on the front page the slogan "we want weapons" chanted in front of the platform by the group of Berisha supporters (it is the same "claque" that has been accompanying him since the electoral campaigns), stating that these words were taken up by all the demonstrators.⁵ In an attempt to erase the impression that the Albanian population was not reacting as it should to the events in Kosovo, a journalist of Zëri Popullit wrote that "the arrival of so many people proves that the issue involving Kosovo and the other Albanian territories unjustly left outside of our state borders is absolutely not as some irresponsible journalists have described it, as if ordinary people in Albania were not concerned with the fate of our brothers from the ex Yugoslavia. In fact, it has been shown once again that our national problem, and Kosovo alone being at the core of this problem, causes deep suffering to the people. [This demonstration] shows that, independently of the great difficulties that oppress the population of the capital, when blood brothers are involved, it is able to take a fair stance and come to their rescue (...)." Two days before, in fact, the newspaper Koha Jonë⁶ had published an editorial entitled "If we have to fight in Kosovo ... The majority says no, some hesitate, very few are ready for war." According to the article, no Albanian has the time to go to war when he is busy crossing the Greek border, sailing across the Adriatic, complaining about the rising prices on the markets, watching where he puts his feet as he walks along the uneven, muddy streets of the capital or getting organised for the next power cut.

The alarmist declarations of the press about the Serbs entering Albania, on Sunday, 8 March, did not change the attitude of Tirana’s population. There were just as many people strolling by the lake or eating a meal in the restaurants that line its shore, and their interest for newspaper stands had not grown. Life continued in spite of the commotion reported by the newspapers (alerting of the army, dispatching of foodstuffs to the northern border, visit to Kukës by the Defence Minister, Minister of the Interior and Vice President of Parliament).

For the first time, however, the "national issue" (çështje kombëtare) is openly debated in the media and political institutions, which are attempting to kindle an Albanian patriotic feeling at a time when the country is experiencing a deep identity crisis. The dreams of power that accompany all forms of national assertion can in fact seduce a population that is coming out of a period of state and national disintegration (in 1997, not only the emblems of the state - the army, the police, the administration - were destroyed, but also those of the nation - libraries, museums, archaeological sites). Under such circumstances, it might be reassuring to look outside of Albania : as Enver Hoxha stated in the 1980s, "We are not a state of three million people, but a nation of seven million."

This "explosion of nationalism"⁷ among the Albanians is nevertheless limited; it is more a dream of power than of real political engagement. On 5 March, a performance of the singer Kastriot Tusha was staged at the Tirana Ballet Opera Theatre. The concert featured "popular songs from the Albanian territories (trevë), including those of the diaspora which, on the whole, bearing in mind the current situation in Kosovo, celebrate national unity and peace for all Albanians, wherever they may be".⁸ That evening, there was a full house and the performance was entirely devoted to celebrating the Albanian nation: the songs were accompanied by "traditional" dances from various Albanian regions, and, what is more, the repertoire featured only songs about Kosovo and Macedonia, "without forgetting Tchamerie", as one of them goes. Every time the name of an Albanian territory outside of Albania was mentioned, the audience clapped and whistled, and the same occurred when the song about the University of Tetovë was sung. The last piece, which featured a dramatic and elaborate scene, ended with a thundering applause. Its refrain went: "Without union, there is no strength / without Kosovo, there is no Albania / without Albania, there is no Kosovo" (pa bashkim nuk ka fuqi / pa Kosovë nuk ka Shqipëri / pa Shqipëri Kosovë nuk ka ). At the end of the concert, in response to a comment on the political nature of the performance, an Albanian student replied: "It’s not politics, it’s patriotism." The following day, however, at the "political" demonstration that took place on the same square in Tirana, the public was visibly less enthusiastic as it listened to political leaders assert the determination of the Albanian nation in the face of Serb aggression. Apparently, Albanians were ready to dream of national unity for an hour or two, without personally being ready to take part in achieving this objective.

As of the first week of April, instead of three or four pages, the events in Kosovo take up no more than half a page in the newspapers, and the 8 o’clock news is dedicated entirely to Albania’s domestic problems. There is a stark contrast between the interest shown by Albanian politicians and the media at the start of the crisis and the complete absence of significant information on Kosovo some weeks later.

After many months of conflict, the demonstrations in support of Kosovars have vanished and Kosovo has become a major issue in the political debate between the socialist government and the opposition led by former President Sali Berisha. For the opposition, the war in Kosovo is just another way to attack the government. Next to the accusations of corruption and illegal trafficking, the policies of the socialist government are judged to be inconsistent and unfavourable to the cause of the Albanian nation.

The government, for its part, accused the opposition of irresponsibility and hypocrisy, exploiting the misfortune of the Kosovars for the sole aim of returning to power in Albania and trying to obtain the support of the Kosovars in its endeavour to destabilise the state. To this, the opposition responds that the Albanian state is the state of all Albanians and that the Kosovars should not be condemned for taking it to heart: after all, did not many of them give their lives for its creation in 1913? "For this state," Rexhep Kastrati writes,⁹ "all ethnic Albanians, no matter where and regardless of their political convictions, social class and religion, have given their lives and will do so again today if necessary, that is to say if an infinitesimal part of the current state is threatened."

The influx of refugees, which was still negligible in April, now represents a problem. Kosovar refugees arrive in Albania from the north and settle in the regions of Tropojë and Has, which are too poor to assist them and where, due to the absence of state authorities, they are at the mercy of criminals. Therefore, most go to Tirana and Durrës, from where they attempt the crossing to Italy. Due to the situation in Albania, the government is incapable of providing assistance to the refugees; at the same time, the international humanitarian organisations also complain that the insecurity and lawlessness that prevail in the north of Albania make it impossible for them to deliver aid to Kosovar refugees.

The consequences of the presence of these refugees in Albania are widely discussed in the press. The refugees are sometimes seen as a threat to the local population (this is the general attitude towards refugees as a whole, rather than the result of actual actions by Kosovars, who do not come to Albania to steal or kill, but rather are victims of the insecurity that reigns there), and also, at other times, as elements manipulated by the head of the opposition, Sali Berisha. In fact, the opposition has not failed to declare its support for the refugees and to stigmatise the wariness of the government towards the Kosovars. The media which support the government in power have reported that some Kosovars took part in the attempted coup d’état of 14 September at Sali Berisha’s side. Here again, the Kosovo question is used in Albania’s domestic affairs.

For these reasons, the distance that many Albanians have maintained with respect to the fate of the Kosovars does not seem to have diminished. For a large part of the ethnic Albanian population, in particular in the south of the country, Kosovo is too far away and they just don’t want to hear about Kosovars. "Kosovo, we don’ talk about it," says a citizen of Bilisht (south-east). "The Kosovars who came to Tirana brought only trouble. They are bastards. They have got nothing to do with the south." The southern regions are not touched by the transit of Kosovar refugees and they have no direct experience of the situation in Kosovo. The same applies to northern Greece which, faced with clandestine Albanian immigration, has not perceived any change since the war began in Kosovo. At the city hall of Dipotamia, a Greek border town, they say that the political crisis which broke out in Tirana on 14 September had much more of an impact on border crossings than the war in Kosovo.

Generally speaking, the current situation has no influence on the way in which ethnic Albanians in the south perceive the Kosovars, and the issue of the future status of Kosovo is of little interest. The reunification of the province to Albania would increase the weight of the north and this, according to Albanians in the south, would not be good for the country. In the town of Pogradec, near lake Ohrid, tradesmen and industrialists who follow national politics are more interested in crafting good relations with neighbouring Greece and Macedonia than they are in the settlement of the Kosovo question. Here, again, the dominating feeling towards the Kosovars is that of mistrust or plain indifference. Both in Bilisht and in Pogradec there are walls covered with "UÇK" graffiti; when questioned, people answer "some individuals from Tirana came to write on the walls. It wasn’t the local people who did this."

4 Zëri Popullit, 7 March 1998.

5 Ibidem, p.3.

6 Koha Jonë, 5 March 1998.